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So much for sanitation. How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the displeasure of the job?

Believe it or not, there are jobs that need to be done, but nobody in the world has a passion for them.

Employment isn't about fear or force. It's about two parties agreeing that they each come out better after the transaction of selling labor. I may not love what I do every day, but the sacrifice is worth it to have the benefit of the salary and other benefits that my employer gives me. And she probably isn't enamored with having to give up that money to pay me, but values the productivity I deliver (when I'm not on HN) more than that money.

The ability to trade labor for goods or money is the single greatest invention in the history of humanity. Without it I'd have to grow my own food and fibers, weave my own cloth for clothing (in the house I had to construct myself), sitting in a dark drafty room wishing that some altruist would come cure my illnesses.

But instead, we found that people can decide they value one thing more than another, and engage in voluntary commerce so that they can trade in kind.

Employment is in fact often about fear or force.

I work a day job because the state will literally show up with police and guns if I went out into the mountains and lived off the land. Therefore unless I want to starve I must work. Even when it's on shit I hate.

I am lucky enough to have a skill that is sufficiently valuable that I can survive despite disabilities making it difficult to work.

If you imagine that the labor market is free because it happens to mostly be positive sum, you haven't lived at the bottom of the labor market for any length of time.

the state will literally show up with police and guns if I went out into the mountains and lived off the land

Why? Is it someone else's land that you're trespassing on, using up their resources, hunting their animals, etc?

Shall all of us who don't feel fulfilled do the same thing as you propose? When you hurt yourself and get an infection, are you going to crawl back out of the woods and expect there to still be other people to care for you, supply your antibiotic, and yes, clean your bedpan while you recover? What right to you have to expect the bedpan cleaner to serve you?

unless I want to starve I must work.

Who do you expect to plant, harvest, and distribute the food you want to eat?

When you want something from someone - food, medicine, etc. - you're going to have to offer something in return, else why should they provide it? For almost all of us, our labor is the product we can offer in trade. Only by all of us making this tradeoff does society survive.

>When you want something from someone - food, medicine, etc. - you're going to have to offer something in return

What if the value of someone's labour is not enough for the things they need to survive? There's no function of the market that ensures it will be.

At some point, you either have to help people out without anything in return, or choose to let them die.

What if the value of someone's labour is not enough for the things they need to survive?

Sure, we can make a moral argument about that. But that's not what this branch of the debate is about. We were debating the proposition that "money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people" and employment is force.

But since you bring it up, my biggest concern about BI is along the same lines as your moral question. Suppose that every year we hand out $X,000 to each person. Some people are going to waste that on booze, gambling, etc., and still be left with nothing to eat. What's our moral obligation to those people?

> What's our moral obligation to those people?

I think we can all agree it to be none.

> Why? Is it someone else's land that you're trespassing on, using up their resources, hunting their animals, etc?

Yeah. Just about every bit of land is owned by someone. In order to have my own land to live off of I need to produce some income to pay property taxes, lest the state confiscate it from me.

And it's not a question of 1% owning "too much", either. A hunter-gatherer life is hideously inefficient. There isn't enough land on Earth to support even a small fraction of the population living this way.

> How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the displeasure of the job?

Fortunately, given your basic income in this scenario, you have more money to do so!

How do you know the guy who mows my lawn isn't passionate about it? He helps beautify people's property and takes lots of satisfaction in that.

Why are passion projects only ones that have no economic value?

I said that the guy mowing the lawn is either doing it out of "good will" or "fear". The way I read the post I was responding to was: if UBI existed, less people would be forced into doing stuff they didn't want to do, so there would be less people to mow my lawn because a lot of people wouldn't mow my lawn if they weren't coerced into it therefore we shouldn't stop coercing people into mowing my lawn cause that would mean it would be more expensive and not as many people would be around to mow my lawn.

Except not if my lawn care cost goes up too much, I'll just fire my lawn guy and do it myself.

I'm not holding a gun to my lawn guy's head to coerce him in any way. This is what he chose to do to make money, in the face of all other money making opportunities.

If he took another job or income source tomorrow, and simply didn't show up again and didn't let me know, I have no power or authority to get him back behind a mower.

If he's doing it out of fear, it's not fear I'm placing into him. He has plenty of other ways to make money, so if fear of doing those jobs is what's driving him into the lawn care business, then nobody but him is responsible for cultivating that fear.

There's nothing wrong with mowing somebody's lawn, he beautifies my property, saves me from working in the heat, and in exchange I pay him slightly more than what he asked.

There's innumerable other things he could be doing for money, but he chose this one. Since he's good at his job, reliable and reasonably priced, I and my neighbors benefit from his choice and he benefits from having blocks of contiguous neighbors all hiring him.

Bonus, he even has two employees who he keeps in the labor market.

You're might not be holding a gun to his head, but at the end of the debt collection chain there is more than enough coercion and disenfranchisement to keep people doing things they don't want to do.

you know, most people in the US are capitalist. if you want to push the idea of a basic income, it's probably not a good idea to get all communist-y and stuff.

because pointing out the non-state chain of force is so much more out of fashion than the "taxes=theft" of the ur-capitalist rand worshipers?

ooh boy, you have a lot to learn about sales and marketing of ideas.

but i guess that would make sense, .. since.. well, you know.

There will always be work that some find unglamorous but has to be done. I doubt that garbage collectors see their job as a higher calling or a passion, and yet without solid waste collection society would literally collapse.

Somehow, you're assigning lesser intrinsic value to lawn mowing than you are to (eg.) jobs in STEM. Society may have assigned a lesser monetary value to it, but that's a function of supply and demand, and not a suggestion that the job is somehow "lesser" in some way.

It doesn't make sense to judge another person's job decisions using your own value system. Many (perhaps even most?) people see their job as a means to an end -- a way to make money to do the things they love. That's a perfectly reasonable and honorable way to live your life.

What we do need is equal access to the means to do other things. If you're interested, capable, and willing to have a career in (eg.) STEM, you should be able to do so without having to fight the socioeconomic conditions into which you were born.

I bet you anything there are people who love collecting garbage. Driving huge trucks, being in tune with the scale of human life, seeing the guts of the city, routine... some people love that kind of thing. Where I'm from, there are people who go around picking up trash at the local park out of personal fulfillment in their spare time. They enjoy making the park beautiful.

Where do you read me assigning more value to STEM work? You're totally injecting that into what I wrote.

On the contrary, I'm saying that all work can be fulfilling, not just STEM work. But all work can also be degrading if it forces people to compromise themselves unreasonably.

I meant the STEM work as an example (hence the eg.) -- sorry if I wasn't more clear. You could just as easily substitute any "skilled" profession -- medicine, etc.

All work can certainly be fulfilling, but more because of the reasons I described (it's a means to an end) than the reasons you're describing. Certainly, people shouldn't be forced to take particularly degrading jobs when they don't want to in order to survive. But do they find it degrading, or do you? Those are two very different things.

It's impossible that there are enough people in the world passionate about garbage collection -- allocated perfectly across the correct geographic regions, mind you -- to fill all of the available positions.

> It's impossible that there are enough people in the world passionate about garbage collection -- allocated perfectly across the correct geographic regions, mind you -- to fill all of the available positions.

And you base this claim on what?

It's just my opinion, and I have no factual basis. It's an appeal to common sense, but I stand by it nonetheless.

Well, given that people right now tend to mostly do whatever makes them the most money, it's impossible to quantify how many people might like doing gargabe that aren't just because they're doing something else for the money. If no one had to work and only did what they wanted, no one has any idea how the numbers might play out for who wants to do what. It's entirely possible there's plenty of people who might like driving those big trucks enough to do it.

I'm not saying it's likely, but it's certainly not "impossible."

I think the mere fact that someone knows they don't need their job to survive can help them enjoy it a lot more.

Also I think a side effect of Basic Income will be greatly increased quality of jobs, because I'd imagine for a lot of jobs, making them less shitty is a lot more attractive for the cost than a higher wage.

For example, a lot of service jobs have polices of putting up with extremely obnoxious behaviour, because it marginally increases revenue at the expense of the employee's sanity, which is effectively free. But if you're not quite as desperate for a job, you're much more able to price that in, and choose to work for less at the restaurant next door, that lets you tell jerks to GTFO.

There's lots of work that needs to get done, whether anybody likes it or not. If the intrinsic motivation to do it is not there, people are willing to offer rewards to other people for it to be done.

I feel like your ideals are very far away from a gritty reality of the working arrangement for most people.

Don't mistake my conviction for idealism. What I'm saying is that if "the intrinsic motivation to do it is not there", then we're on thin ice, because people are detached from a basic aspect of life, which is developing the relationships we form to, and through, work.

The foundation of society is people working for each other and for themselves, regardless of whatever so-called "economy" is imposed on top of that. Underneath the money (or in some societies the lack of money), what do you have? People doing work, getting in the flow of life, sharing and receiving with the people around them. That's the basis of living life.